Friday, April 22, 2016

She stares at this mister-ish frau
Whose bearing seems twisted somehow
Then we fade out to black
But what's played on the track
Is "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now?"

David Cairns

Barbara Stanwyck and Lillian Roth (top) are Ladies They Talk About (Howard Bretherton, William Keighley; 1933). From David Cairns: "It's all true! Stanwyck encounters the cigar-smoking butch women inmates in Ladies They Talk About, looks amazed, and then the Vitaphone Orchestra plays her out with a cheeky, familiar tune..."

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Miss Baby Face started her climb
One man and one floor at a time.
A rising erection
Displayed the connection
Twixt her and the corporate slime.

Donald B. Benson

Baby Face (Alfred E. Green; 1933): Barbara Stanwyck and Theresa Harris look up at the "erection"of stone, steel and glass, the Gotham Trust building. Barbara seduces a clerk to get in on the ground floor of the bank, and uses sex to continue to rise from department to department, illustrated by the camera climbing a model of the skyscraper floor by floor.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

We're tempted by Sternberg's blonde starlet
An empress who yearns to be harlot
She's laid a battalion
And maybe a stallion
An attempt that has made her turn scarlet.

David Cairns

Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934) does not show Catherine the Great (Marlene Dietrich) getting amorous in a stable, but the script throws in several teasing allusions to this apocryphal rumor.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

It's a fault of the MPAA's
They assault with contemptuous gaze
Their refined master-cutter
With his mind in the gutter
Is exalted, untempted Will Hays.

David Cairns

Will Hays was the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) (1922–45), running what came to be called the Hays Office, enforcing what became known as the Hays Code. In the postwar period, this organization would be renamed the Motion Picture Association of America , or MPAA.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Screaming Fay has a date with an ape-brute
Smiling Kay's tempting fate, no escape-route
Busby's girls underdress
Just in pearls, or much less
And poor Mae gets a face full of grapefruit.

David Cairns

A passel of pre-Code prettys: Fay Wray flirts with King Kong (1933); gold-digger Kay Francis is one of the Girls About Town (1931) with Joel McCrea; moll Mae Clarke has breakfast with The Public Enemy (1931), James Cagney.

Monday, April 4, 2016

To not offend Decency's Legions,
Or upset Midwestern Norwegians,
You must never speak of
Or venture a peek of
A roster of bodily regions.

Donald B. Benson

The 1933 founding of "the Catholic organization the National Legion of Decency, which rated films independently of the motion picture industry, put pressure on the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, which had theretofore enforced the industry's own self-censorship standards, albeit not very seriously." --Wikipedia Image: Miriam Hopkins in The Story of Temple Drake (Stephen Roberts; 1933).

Friday, April 1, 2016

Joe Breen would exclude the explicit
And clean up the crude and illicit
He'd lighten the dirt
That writers insert
The scenes so de-lewd-ed you'd miss it.

From Wikipedia: Joseph Ignatius Breen was an American film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) who applied the Hays Code to film production.

The 1933 founding of the Catholic organization the National Legion of Decency (NLD), which rated films independently of the industry, put pressure on the MPPDA, which had theretofore enforced the motion picture industry's own self-censorship standards, albeit not very seriously.

Will H. Hays, who had been in charge of enforcing the industry's voluntary code since 1927, worried that the NLD's efforts could weaken the power of his own office and hurt industry profits. Thus he stepped up enforcement efforts and appointed the "tough Irish Catholic" Breen as his assistant to impose the more rigorous standards.

Catoon Sundays!

Each Sunday we turn the limerick spotight on the history of animation.

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ABOUT US...

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The Universal Frankenstein films...in limericks!

Our chronological five-lined Frankenstein fun-fest was restored to life on 1/25/2013.

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This is a blog of limericks. What we have here are limericks -- lots and lots of limericks. I said limericks. Limericks, limericks, limericks. Plus limericks. In short, LimerWrecks is all about the limericks. And, if you act NOW, you'll get more limericks!

The Vincentennial

Our centennial tribute to Vincent Price began on May 17, 2011, here. This monster marathon was our part in the annual Countdown to Halloween, and it continued to crawl along until it breathed its last on March 17, 2012.

Munden's Bar

Read a comic by Surly Hack for free online. It's a Munden's Bar story called Ladeez Nite, and it was written by comics great John Ostrander. You'll find the story here

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